LATIN-AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS-REVOLUTIONS
with Chile because of its disturbed con
dition and the enmity engendered by
the action of our Government. We have
commerce with all these countries, many
of our citizens have invested capital
therein, and these interests cannot fail
to be injured by the civil disorder occa
sioned by the strife of ambitious men.
Does any one believe that our Govern
ment could look on with indifference if
our next door neighbor, Mexico, should
again fall into anarchy, as at frequent
intervals in the past, and the millions
of American capital which has been at
tracted thither by the beneficent rule of
Diaz should become the prey of revo
lutionists and rival aspirants for the
presidency ?
Third. The Spanish war has made the
subject a practical problem for us. The
territory which we took from Mexico
was soon overrun by Americans, and its
government was readily adapted to our
system. But Porto Rico is already
densely populated with people educated
in Spanish-American methods of gov
ernment. We have already had an ex
hibition of the embarrassments to be
overcome. In the first election held
under the territorial organization pro
vided by Congress a practice was re
sorted to very common in the Latin
American republics-when one party
finds itself outnumbered or outwitted
in the campaign, it abstains in a body
from the election, and then cries fraud
or force. We read that in the late elec
tion in Porto Rico for the territorial
legislature and other offices, one party,
the Federals, refused to go to the polls,
and the Republicans, as a consequence,
elected all their candidates ; but in cele
brating the victory they were attacked
by the Federals, and several were killed
and wounded in the affray.
We have by act of Congress become
responsible for the establishment and
maintenance of a stable government in
Cuba. The history of their brethren
of the same race in Central and South
America does not give much assurance
that the Cubans will soon attain the
position required by Congress. One of
the first steps in that direction which is
foreshadowed, the election to the presi
dency of a professional revolutionist,
born and educated in San Domingo,
does not argue well for the future. In
the election held to choose delegates to
the convention to frame a constitution,
only a minority of the qualified electors
took part, and I have good authority
for the statement that fully 95 per cent
of the electors representing the property
interests of the island abstained from the
election.
And yet it appears that this minority
of the people of Cuba are to frame its
organic code, to set the machinery of
the new government in motion, and to
determine the relations which are to
exist between the new government and
the United States.
This review, it must be confessed, does
not present a cheerful outlook for the
friends and admirers of republican gov
ernment, but for the citizens of the United
States at least it suggests a solace. It
is a consolation to us to know that the
men who laid the foundations of our
Government and have thus far con
ducted its affairs have appreciated the
value of peace and the superior merits
of the ballot over the bayonet ; that ew
had a Washington, not a Bolivar nor an
Iturbide, to put the Government in mo
tion, and that the Constitution has been
held as too sacred an instrument to be
made the sport of ambitious rivals for
the presidency.
I75